Police officers attempt to retrieve a balloon bearing an anti-North Korea banner from a mountain river in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, June 23, as the balloon fell there after being launched a day before in the border town of Paju by a Seoul-based organization of North Korean defectors. / Yonhap

By Jun Ji-hye

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea's push for passage of a bill to criminalize the sending of propaganda leaflets and other items from South Korea into North Korea is facing backlash from an international organization dedicated to human rights, as well as from domestic civic groups, for what they claimed is a violation of freedom of expression.

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based organization conducting systematic investigations of human rights abuses around the world, said Monday that the proposed law would also make engaging in humanitarianism and human rights activism a criminal offense.

"The South Korean government seems more interested in keeping North Korea's Kim Jong-un happy than letting its own citizens exercise their basic rights on behalf of their northern neighbors," John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a press release. "The proposed law does a great disservice to the people of both South Korea and North Korea, and the National Assembly should vote against it."

On Dec. 2, ruling party lawmakers unilaterally approved the controversial bill to revise the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act at the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, after opposition lawmakers walked out of the meeting in protest of the move. The main opposition People Power Party claimed the bill amounts to the Moon Jae-in government succumbing to pressure from Pyongyang.

The ruling party, which commands an overwhelming majority of Assembly seats, is planning to put the controversial bill to a vote during an Assembly plenary session, Wednesday.

If passed, those who send anti-Pyongyang banners and leaflets and other items such as USB and SD cards with digital content showing life outside North Korea across the border would face up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won ($28,000).

The government came up with the bill days after Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister and a high-ranking party official, publicly demanded in June that Seoul prevent sending of the leaflets and other items, which has been conducted mostly by North Korean defector groups.

At the time, the North even demolished an inter-Korean liaison office, denouncing the activities in the South as a violation of inter-Korean agreements, and demanded that the Moon government take preventive measures.

Lawyers for Human Rights and Unification of Korea, a conservative civic group here, expressed a similar position, calling the proposed revision a violation of the Constitution as "it would infringe upon the freedom of expression."

"Activities that criticize dictatorship and deliver outside information to North Korean residents should continue," the civic group said in a statement. "If the Assembly passes the bill, we will file a constitutional appeal."

Meanwhile, mayors of 10 border cities and counties including Paju, Gimpo and Yeoncheon in Gyeonggi Province said the passage of the bill is necessary to ensure the safety of residents in border areas who are concerned about the North's possible retaliatory military actions in protest of leaflet-carrying balloons launched in the border areas.

"We welcome the passage of the bill at the Assembly committee. The upcoming plenary session should vote for it," they said in a joint statement.